The Podcast Landscape 2026: The Core Numbers by Tom Webster
In this week’s Sounds Profitable newsletter, Tom Webster takes a brief look at the first installment of The Podcast Landscape 2026. According to the report’s census-weighted survey of 5,473 U.S. adults conducted in August, 74% of American adults have consumed a podcast, 55% in the past month and 39% in the past week. All within a point of The Podcast Landscape 2025. The official press release adds that 34% of podcast consumers started within the past year, up from 28%, and that weekly video podcast viewing rose to 44% from 40%. YouTube led platform use at 63%, followed by Spotify at 33% and Netflix at 21% in its first year offering podcasts, ahead of Apple Podcasts at 15%. Netinfluencer’s coverage of the 2026 Podcast Landscape notes that just 5% name Netflix as their most-used platform, while the share naming a podcast-specific app as most used fell from 19% to 15% and mean weekly listening hours slipped from 6.3 to 5.7, a decline concentrated in video. Future installments of the report will focus on super-spenders, AI, clips and politics.
Is Podcasting Rated Highly Enough in the Media Mix? by Sheila Obeng-King
ExchangeWire asks whether podcast advertising gets budget in line with its audience, pointing to Ofcom data showing 27% of UK adults listen weekly, up from 23% a year ago. Audion’s Geoffrey Fossier argues that a channel spanning smartphones, smart speakers and connected TVs deserves core budget rather than supplementary treatment. Azerion’s Roxanne Harley says podcasts offer attention inside communities listeners actively choose, but warns that creative has to feel relevant or it risks alienating them. AudioStack’s Silke Zetzsche counters that host-read ads are trusted but hard to scale, and that contextually matched creative remains underused. Adform’s William Jones calls podcasts undervalued and says improved attribution now lets buyers measure business impact across the customer journey.
Podcasting’s Most Valuable Ad Asset? The Host.
Podcast News Daily features a conversation between Oxford Road CEO Dan Granger and Sounds Profitable Partner Bryan Barletta on where podcast monetization goes from here. Granger names the host’s genuine, personal endorsement as the medium’s core advertising strength, one he says outweighs programmatic placements regardless of CPM. He favors a “both-and” approach in which free, ad-supported shows act as entry points alongside paywalled content, live events and merchandise, and he cautions that rising ad loads often reflect the cost of expensive talent deals more than audience demand. Barletta says anyone who wants podcasting to be a business needs to invest in it like one. Oxford Road’s research also found that advertisers typically use four different attribution methods while fully trusting none.
Most Australians consume both audio and video podcasts
AdNews reports on Acast’s Podcast Pulse 2026 report, which found that 86% of Australian podcast fans consume both audio and video podcasts, up eight points on last year, while 14% remain audio-only. More than half of listeners (56%) start an episode in one format and finish it in another. On trust, 51% of Australian listeners trust brand and product recommendations from podcast hosts, and podcasters were the only creator category in the country to gain commercial trust over the past 12 months, with YouTubers at 36%, social media influencers at 34%, journalists at 33% and celebrities at 31%. Acast’s Henrik Isaksson says Australian audiences move fluidly between channels, making the debate over whether video displaces audio redundant. The survey covered 300 Australians aged 16 to 64 and was conducted by Differentology in August.
…as for the rest of the news:
- On Media Roundtable, Sounds Profitable’s Bryan Barletta joins Oxford Road’s Giles Martin and Dan Granger to discuss what the Bumper Score means for podcast measurement, following Oxford Road’s partnership with Bumper and the AMP Accords’ push for better data.
- Cineverse has launched eight video podcasts on Amazon Fire TV, including horror shows from Bloody FM and comedy from the WITZ Podcast Network.
- Owl & Co’s Hernan Lopez asks in Are We In An Attention Supercycle? whether media valuations are being reshaped, noting that his Attention 20 Index is up 27% since April against 17% for the S&P 500.
- Audacy’s State of Audio excerpt, Podcasting’s Demo Plot Twist, says 35 million Gen Z Americans listen monthly, women’s listenership has tripled over the past decade and Latino podcast consumption rose from 43% to 60% in two years.
- Oxford Road’s new ORBIT ranking of top-performing B2B podcasts, built on campaigns representing more than $2 billion in ad spend, finds its top 15 shows span eight categories, with news programs taking the No. 1 and No. 11 spots and business shows landing below average.
- Ben Robins’ Sound Insights Report finds that UK news podcasting is two different markets that don’t share a winner, with The Daily T reaching 2.88 million on YouTube against 177,000 monthly audio downloads.
- Jomboy’s Brett Joss told Beet.TV at the IAB Podcast Upfront that clips and highlights hook casual scrollers, while creators explain why anyone should care, turning people who stopped for one play into fans who may eventually watch whole games.
